A 'Universal Vaccine' May Soon Protect Against All Coronaviruses, Including the Common Cold On 05/12/21 at 5:00 AM EDT Jason S. McLellan, associate professor of molecular biosciences, left, and graduate student Daniel Wrapp, right, work in the McLellan Lab at The University of Texas at Austin in 2020. Vivian Abagiu/College of Natural Sciences at UT Austin It took Barney Graham, Jason McLellan and their collaborators just a weekend in January 2020 to design a novel vaccine they believed would be capable of protecting people against COVID-19. Their design formed the basis for the vaccines that Moderna, Pfizer and others would eventually use to inoculate millions of Americans a little more than a year later, a pace of development unprecedented in the annals of modern medicine.